


No Need for Heroes

by bionically



Series: Unlikely Heroes [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: #TeamAphrodite, F/M, Fairest of The Rare's Love Fest 2020, Ginny's kind of a b, Hogwarts Eighth Year, POV Pansy Parkinson, Redeeming Pansy, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22774846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bionically/pseuds/bionically
Summary: Pansy Parkinson had no need for heroes.Fairest of the Rare Love Fest 2020 #TeamAphrodite
Relationships: Neville Longbottom/Pansy Parkinson
Series: Unlikely Heroes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637329
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27
Collections: Love Fest 2020





	No Need for Heroes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamsofdramione](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofdramione/gifts).



> Reviewed/beta'd by disenchantedglow. You're a legend!
> 
> Prompt: Pansy/Neville, eighth year
> 
> This is Part I of the Heroes series.

* * *

There were few things that irritated Pansy more than overrating someone's usefulness and attributing them with heroism when they had, in all probability, not given their actions very much thought. 

So when Pansy had to push her way past the giggling sixth years crowded around someone in the hallway, she growled deep in her throat with annoyance. " _Move_ , you're blocking the corridor."

Most of the girls jumped when they saw Pansy, but one of them tossed her blond hair over her shoulder and sniffed, looking Pansy up and down as though she were a slug to be squashed. 

It didn't bother Pansy one bit. "Your skirt's tucked into your knickers in the back," she said, and smirked a little when the uppity blonde gasped and whirled around to check. 

Pansy didn't miss the way Neville Longbottom's eyes warily followed her as she made her way through the knot of girls. She only paused momentarily next to him before saying, "Keeping Potter's celebrity status warm for him while he's gone, are you? Don't worry; I doubt these girls would notice you if he were here." She didn't bother listening for a response before stalking off again.

She hated these stupid faux heroes so much.

* * *

Every morning when Pansy woke up, right after her skincare regimen, she would attempt to draw on her eyeliner by wand. It never worked. The line was always too thick, or crooked, or it ended up a millimetre too high. It was as though Hogwarts itself were punishing her for her comments against Potter.

“Oh, that won’t do at all,” the mirror Pansy said. “If you don’t mind me saying so, perhaps a _bit_ lighter with that charm. You’re too young and pretty to try such a _gothic_ look.”

Pansy didn’t bother to argue. She would simply vanish her charmed makeup and start over by hand, drawing layer upon layer of eyeliner, so that her soft vulnerable eyes became harder and more masked. When she first started to wear eye makeup, she had studied up on the principles, but gradually she had tossed those preset ideas out the window—like a great many other preset ideas in her life—and had taken the brush in her own hand. 

When she finished, she looked hard and remote, and that was just how she liked it. Nobody dared do anything to someone who was masked. A masked person was a person who could do something to _you_.

* * *

They were at it again, those stupid girls. 

One would think there were _no_ attractive upper year wizards at Hogwarts. 

Correction, there _were_ none. Never one to go where there was danger, Blaise had left after sixth year. Draco was still under house arrest, as was Theo. Greg hadn’t returned because he had failed most of his NEWTs even when the Carrows were actively trying to fudge their scores. And...that was it.

Alright, there had been a few boys from Ravenclaw that Pansy had fancied, even though she knew nothing would ever have come of it. They hadn’t returned. _Pansy_ wouldn’t have returned if her mother hadn’t forced her to, hadn’t said something about how she needed to have a pristine reputation to maintain her marital chances. A lifetime of listening to her mother had worked to her detriment; Pansy was self-conscious whenever a man of wealth and good family walked through the door. 

That was probably the reason she couldn’t keep Draco; she had been much too clingy. If she could redo that relationship, she’d know how to work her wiles. At the time, her mother had been wildly ecstatic about their relationship. All of Mrs. Parkinson’s previous bitterness over Narcissa Malfoy’s many snubs had been completely forgotten over this development. Underneath her mother’s comments had been the not so subtle refrain: _you’ll never find anyone as suitable or as rich as Draco Malfoy ._ Emphasis on the latter.

She could always get a job. Her class scores were fairly decent, Pansy had always snapped back to her mother. Not to the level of one Hermione Granger, but decent enough to afford plenty of Ministry opportunities. Furthermore, she was fluent in a fair number of languages. She'd heard Granger’s French accent, and it hadn’t been _half_ so good.

“And are we now comparing ourselves to Muggleborns?” Mrs. Parkinson would ask in her tart, pointed manner. “Will you _work_ for a living, like a common drudge?”

Not anymore, unless she could persuade her current professors to write her a letter of recommendation. Pansy knew one would not be forthcoming from Headmistress McGonagall, who sometimes looked her way as though she wanted to say something but never did.

Pansy understood the feeling well. What was there to say when one of her professors saw fit to punish an entire House for something Pansy said in a fit of panic?

When Pansy passed Neville Longbottom in the hallway, she made a scoffing sound, making sure he was close enough to hear. “Don’t think that just because you’ve lost a few pounds that it counts for anything. _Fat_ bottom.”

It was a low blow and a fairly weak one as well. Sometimes Pansy just went through the motions of insulting others because they expected it from her. If she stopped, they would assume she was _weak_ and a target. Whatever she was, she wasn’t ever going to be thought as weak.

* * *

It was inevitable that Potter would come back with a group of Aurors to speak to the school about what happened last year. The loud cheering that ripped through the Great Hall wasn’t altogether a surprise either, although Pansy rolled her eyes at it.

She couldn’t think of anything else to do. Inside, her stomach churned. She was actually feeling _nervous_. What if they hauled her away for intention to harm, or some other rot like that? She had started to...yes, she had actually started to compose a note of apology to Harry Potter. Not an apology, really, but a few words of explanation. She hadn’t meant to _kill_ him herself, but he had survived the first encounter with Voldemort, hadn’t he? Why didn’t it occur to anyone else that maybe he could survive it again? Was the saving of one life worth so many deaths?

Hadn’t they discussed this before in History of Magic? Why was giving up a life revered as a sacrifice _for the greater good_ when they couldn’t carry it out if necessary?

Pansy still felt ill-used and resentful whenever she thought of it. Those sentiments were far better than the faint quavering of guilt that she pushed far, far down.

She still sent Potter the owl. 

It unfortunately didn’t reach him until breakfast, when the Aurors had left and Potter was sitting with the older Gryffindors. 

Pansy couldn’t help casting sideway glances during the entire meal. The whole group of upper-year Gryffindors, all credited now with Acts of Heroism. What a laugh. 

The owl swooped down on the Gryffindor table; the laughing continued as someone picked up the note and turned it over. Pansy recognised with a sinking heart the flash of dried green wax. It was hers, with a swirl of iridescent black stamped through the green. _Not now, not now, for the love of god._ Her spine was completely tense, and she had been holding her fork in place for the past five minutes. _Put it away and read it later_ , she silently urged Potter across the distance. 

It didn't work. Pansy watched with a dry mouth as it was passed down the table. Someone else—Ginny Weasley—picked it up. Possibly the worst person to come across correspondence for Potter. Ginny was fanatical about him. Always a die-hard fan, after they began dating, she turned into the best bodyguard Potter could ever have. Halfway down a hallway, Ginny could hear a perceived insult against Potter and leap into the fray, coarse red hair flying in all directions. 

There was no love lost between the two girls, and yet Pansy could oddly understand just what it was like to be so protective of your man. As her mother always said, _Protect your assets. Don’t let a younger, prettier girl steal your man away. There are no unattractive girls, only lazy ones._

This was—just not the time for Ginny to be intercepting a note to Potter from Pansy.

Pansy’s heart sank as the laughter across the hall stopped. Ginny reared up to her full height. “What does _she_ want?” Pansy overheard. Multiple faces suddenly turned to stare at her across the Ravenclaw table that separated her from the Gryffindor group.

With the attention on her and the conversation trickling to a halt around her, Pansy set down her fork and rose from her table, walking slowly and deliberately across the room.

Under Pansy’s eyes, Ginny huffed and raised her wand. Someone thought to stop Ginny with a useless exclamation of “No, don’t!” before Ginny set Pansy’s note on fire.

Pansy felt nothing watching her owl burn into ash. Maybe there was even a thread of relief running through her. If Potter never saw her letter, there could be no rejection of her explanation, no humiliation on her end. Things could remain the same; no worse, no better.

There was comfort in the status quo.

Oddly, it was Longbottom who spoke up for Pansy. “You shouldn’t have done that, Ginny. It wasn’t your letter.” He spoke calmly and evenly. It registered in the back of Pansy’s head that he wasn’t even stuttering.

“She wanted him _dead_ , Neville.” Ginny glared at Pansy over Potter’s shoulder. “Am I the only one who still remembers?”

“She might’ve had her reasons.” Neville turned to face Pansy. His expression was earnest, open, level—just as it had been the whole of last year when he had volunteered to be _crucio’d_ in place of the younger students. He raised his eyebrows at Pansy as though urging her to say something to prove him right, to show that she wasn’t the bitch she always was to him.

As though he were the bloody hero instead of Harry Potter.

Pansy wanted to punch him in his stupid face. At least Potter was still regarding her warily. The grievances of yesteryear hadn't been forgotten, at least not from that quarter.

“Maybe I wanted to jump on the hero-worship train.” Pansy tossed this directly at Neville. “You know. The real hero. The one who can’t die apparently, even if he’s cast with the Killing Curse a million times.” 

There was a silence, and then a sharp, disbelieving bark of laughter from Ginny. 

“Or maybe I just wanted to make it a million and _one_ times,” Pansy said just before she flipped her hair over her shoulder and turned away.

A gasp, and then Granger cleared her throat and said carefully, “Look, Parkinson,” but whatever she planned to say was cut off by Ginny's incensed shout: “ _What_ did you just say?”

Pansy didn’t stay to listen to the rest of it.

* * *

The reason that Pansy returned to Hogwarts was the Memorial Wall that now stood at one end of the courtyard. A slab of marble nine feet tall and nine feet wide, it was inscribed alphabetically with the names of the fallen. All known dead were inscribed, regardless of the side they fought on.

Pansy never approached the wall during daylight hours. If she was caught staring at it, she always glared at the people watching her and pointedly fingered the names of some of the worst offenders during the last Battle. 

Now, however, dusk had fallen, and students were hastily making their way away from the Great Hall. There were only a few hours until curfew, and nobody paid any heed to the Memorial Wall.

Pansy lit her wand and moved closer to the wall until she found the name she had been looking for. _Pansy Brown,_ listed right under Lavender Brown. Her fingers trembled when she traced the name.

In the spirit of interhouse unity, sixth years were paired up with first years in randomised mentor-mentee relationships. Pansy had her doubts about whether it was _truly_ random, because there should have been a higher incidence of two housemates being paired up together.

Instead, Pansy had been paired up with Lavender Brown’s younger sister, who had been sorted into Hufflepuff. 

Being named for flowers was not uncommon in wizarding families, and yet Pansy had resented the younger Pansy before she had even met her. Moreover, she was the younger sister of _Lavender Brown,_ who was so determinedly common in a way that it made Pansy ill. It didn't escape Pansy’s notice that she'd behaved in much the same way around Draco Malfoy that Lavender had around Ron, but that was different. Pansy had been putting on an _act._ Or something so close to one that she sometimes forgot the difference.

Whichever the case was, Pansy did not anticipate her mentorship of Pansy Brown at _all._

Only it turned out that Pansy Brown was really very likable. Pansy had gone into the first meeting predisposed to tell the younger girl that they would mostly avoid each other, only for Brown to say with wide eyes, “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.” Then she had asked how Pansy got her hair so straight and shiny. 

One time, Pansy Brown even wrote about her for a class assignment, citing her as a really “cool” older sister; the smartest and prettiest girl at Hogwarts. 

There were other reasons why Pansy began to enjoy her mentorship, reasons that weren’t nearly so egocentric, but whenever she thought of Pansy Brown’s wide-eyed, long-lashed blue eyes, she would feel sad for things she couldn’t and didn’t want to name. 

Even now as she stood in the dim courtyard, she thought about how Pansy Brown would have been a third year this year, and not—

— _not plant fodder._

“You should have explained to Harry,” someone said from out of the darkness.

Pansy jolted and extinguished the light on her wand immediately before whirling around. 

She had forgotten that Longbottom had discovered some sort of silencing charm for his clumsy feet last year and now was able to sneak up on people despite having _no coordination_ whatsoever. 

Pansy raised her wand and pointed it straight at Neville, who didn’t turn to look at her. He continued perusing the wall in silence. “Don’t you know it’s bad manners to sneak up on someone? Or do _heroes_ get a special pass?”

“I was standing on the other side.” He sighed and lifted a hand to trace over the wall. Each individual name lit up in turn as his fingertips passed over its script. “Besides, you know I’m not any kind of a hero.”

That was _just_ the kind of self-deprecating comment a wannabe hero would make, and Pansy growled deep in her throat. 

It turned out he wasn’t finished. "We both know exactly why you said that last year, even if no one believes you if you tried to explain yourself. But Harry would.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

He dropped his hand from the wall and turned to face her. “Pansy. I’ve known you for a long time. I know you can be a bitch. The _biggest_ bitch. But we both know there’s also more to you than that.”

Pansy scoffed. "Right. You _know_ me. From crèche, I suppose, when we were toddlers?"

"I'm not talking about crèche. I'm talking about last year."

He gave her another pointed look before he turned his back and walked away. Pansy was left in the dark courtyard, thinking about his words for a long time, wondering if there had always been something more to Neville Longbottom than anyone had ever guessed, if he could be the one to see things that she never intended to be seen.

  
  
  
  



End file.
